Matthew 10:29-31
Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground outside your Father’s care. And even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. So don’t be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows.
This reading is all about us, but we may not understand that until we put it into a context that would have made sense to Jesus’ first century hearers. To appreciate this reading we have to first understand the concept of substitutionary sacrifice—the ancient Hebrew concept that only blood could atone for sin. By Jesus’ day this had (thankfully) long-ago evolved from human sacrifice to the practice of bringing animals to the temple to be sacrificed in our place for our sins.
The rich could afford to offer large, showy animals—a calf or a sheep or, for the truly wealthy, even a bull, but as people went down the economic scale their offerings grew smaller and smaller. For the poorest of the poor, a pair of tiny, common sparrows was all they could afford. The well-off would have looked on such an insignificant offering with scorn.
But here is Jesus telling us that God, who created them, loves and cares for even those insignificant sparrows and knows their every feather. That is how intimately God knows them. And what’s even more astonishing, God knows us just as well, down to the last hair on our heads, and cares even more for each one of us—no matter how insignificant the world may think us. “Don’t be afraid. You are worth more than many sparrows.”
This short but important teaching comes in the middle of a much longer story. It begins when Jesus was going around the area healing people and preaching the Good News, and as it says a little earlier in Matthew: When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.” These harassed and helpless sheep needed, and deserved, help.
So almost immediately after that, Jesus called his followers together and he sent them out into the world to tell others about him and about his message. He warned them they will be threatened and bullied and harassed along the way by those who don’t want to hear the good news, those who don’t want their comfortable lives to change, those who enjoy their feelings of superiority or positions of power over others.
It is here that today’s reading comes into this longer story and the disciples are told how much they are loved and valued by the One who has numbered every hair on their heads. Jesus tells them, he, too, is going to be threatened and harmed, so it may well happen to them, but they are not to worry, because they are held in God’s love.
Then scripture goes on to say “Anyone who welcomes you welcomes me, and anyone who welcomes me welcomes the One who sent me. [In other words – you’ve got the big guns on your side.] Whoever welcomes a prophet as a prophet will receive a prophet’s reward, and whoever welcomes a righteous person as a righteous person will receive a righteous person’s reward.” So don’t be afraid. You are known and you are loved.
We are called to be in the world sharing the Good News, not just meeting in our churches and singing hymns (not that we can do that right now, anyway.)
We are called to be in the world – not knocking on doors or passing out tracts on the street corner – but caring for each other and recognizing that “each other” is so much more than those who look and sound like us. “Each other” includes all those we might formerly have never taken notice of.... the hungry, the dirty, the unhoused, the annoying, the angry, the jealous, the weeping, the lonely, the rich and the poor. As writer Brennan Manning once put it, "Jesus had no romantic notion of the cost of discipleship. He knew that following Him was as unsentimental as duty, as demanding as love."
“The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few.”
The rich could afford to offer large, showy animals—a calf or a sheep or, for the truly wealthy, even a bull, but as people went down the economic scale their offerings grew smaller and smaller. For the poorest of the poor, a pair of tiny, common sparrows was all they could afford. The well-off would have looked on such an insignificant offering with scorn.
But here is Jesus telling us that God, who created them, loves and cares for even those insignificant sparrows and knows their every feather. That is how intimately God knows them. And what’s even more astonishing, God knows us just as well, down to the last hair on our heads, and cares even more for each one of us—no matter how insignificant the world may think us. “Don’t be afraid. You are worth more than many sparrows.”
This short but important teaching comes in the middle of a much longer story. It begins when Jesus was going around the area healing people and preaching the Good News, and as it says a little earlier in Matthew: When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.” These harassed and helpless sheep needed, and deserved, help.
So almost immediately after that, Jesus called his followers together and he sent them out into the world to tell others about him and about his message. He warned them they will be threatened and bullied and harassed along the way by those who don’t want to hear the good news, those who don’t want their comfortable lives to change, those who enjoy their feelings of superiority or positions of power over others.
It is here that today’s reading comes into this longer story and the disciples are told how much they are loved and valued by the One who has numbered every hair on their heads. Jesus tells them, he, too, is going to be threatened and harmed, so it may well happen to them, but they are not to worry, because they are held in God’s love.
Then scripture goes on to say “Anyone who welcomes you welcomes me, and anyone who welcomes me welcomes the One who sent me. [In other words – you’ve got the big guns on your side.] Whoever welcomes a prophet as a prophet will receive a prophet’s reward, and whoever welcomes a righteous person as a righteous person will receive a righteous person’s reward.” So don’t be afraid. You are known and you are loved.
We are called to be in the world sharing the Good News, not just meeting in our churches and singing hymns (not that we can do that right now, anyway.)
We are called to be in the world – not knocking on doors or passing out tracts on the street corner – but caring for each other and recognizing that “each other” is so much more than those who look and sound like us. “Each other” includes all those we might formerly have never taken notice of.... the hungry, the dirty, the unhoused, the annoying, the angry, the jealous, the weeping, the lonely, the rich and the poor. As writer Brennan Manning once put it, "Jesus had no romantic notion of the cost of discipleship. He knew that following Him was as unsentimental as duty, as demanding as love."
“The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few.”
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